OVO want to make a zero carbon energy grid

The numbers of electric vehicles on the UK roads is rising exponentially. With more than quarter of a million expected to be registered in the UK by Christmas, it seems the electric car revolution is most certainly upon us.

However, to maximise the benefits of the electric vehicle, charging them via renewables is a must. As storage technology is lagging behind generation capacity, this presents something of a problem for the electricity supply market.

One green energy firm thinks they’ve got the solution. OVO want to develop a zero carbon energy grid using the cars themselves as storage and are working on a smart charger to make this happen. Here’s what you need to know.

Here in the UK, there has been an incredible surge in electric vehicles (EV) over the past four years. According to Next Green Car , just 3,500 EVs were registered in 2013, compared to 210,000 by the end of April this year.

Added to this, there are many more EVs available, with most of the mainstream popular manufacturers now offering pure electric or electric hybrid vehicles as part of their range. More than 120 different types of EVs are now for sale, covering all types of body styles from SUVs and vans to sports coupes, estates and superminis.

According to DoT figures, the most popular plug in vehicle is the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV with around 39,000 vehicles sold, with the next most popular being the Nissan Leaf, having sold just short of 25,000. Also popular choices are the BMW 330e and BMW i3 as well as the Mercedes 350e.

Thanks to increased interest in EVs as well as sustained government and private funding, the network of EV charging points has grown exponentially. In 2011 there were just a few hundred nationwide, but now there are many thousand. According to Zap-Map , there are 8,200 charging locations, 13,200 charging devices and 22,500 connectors across the UK.

While this massive increase in the number of electric vehicles on our roads is great news for air quality, it presents something of a challenge to the electricity supply industry. It’s estimated that an additional 15GW of power could be required for EV charging by 2025.

Added to this, for the benefit of EVs to really be felt environmentally , they need to be powered by renewable energy sources. Although more renewable electricity is being produced in the UK than ever before, storage technology has not kept up, which means the UK is still reliant on fossil fuels when the wind is not blowing, and the sun is not shining. But OVO think they may have a solution.

Ed Conolly, group chief technology officer at OVO, spoke to delegates at the Kafka Summit in London, as reported by Business Green. He outlined some of the challenges faced by the energy supply industry in a nation increasingly reliant on electric vehicles.

He said that if all the UKs cars were electric, and making use of high speed chargers, an additional generating capacity of 450GW would be needed to support the potential peak if all the cars were plugged in at once. That’s six times the power produced today!

One solution to this would be to build ‘battery farms’ which store the energy and release it back to the grid at times of peak demand / low production. However, the high cost of battery storage technology and large variations in distribution costs make this difficult to make work economically.

Another idea would be to encourage home storage using products like the Tesla Powerwall. However, it’s still incredibly expensive to purchase for homeowners, and even over many years buyers would struggle to see a cost benefit from their investment.

The third solution he outline is an interesting one. He proposes using cars themselves as energy stores. When not being used, the energy stored in the vehicles themselves could be drawn on by the grid to supplement peak demand. To make it work, two way chargers would be required, which would need to be smart enough to understand real time energy prices in order to manage supply and demand.

Interestingly, one such product is just about to come to market, produced by OVO themselves. If the energy supply could be better managed in this way, then it would reduce the need for fossil fuelled backup supply at times of peak demand. As quoted by Computing , Conolly concluded that,

"A lot of this stuff is two, three or five years from reaching any scale, but from a climate perspective the problems are very real, so the changes we can make [in that time] are much needed,"

OVO call this technology ‘ vehicle to grid’ (V2G) and have begun trials in partnership with Nissan to see how the technology works. The V2G charger is controlled via a smartphone app, and they are looking for owners of Nissan Leafs to take part in the trial.

The trial is expected to last two years, after which time we could see the technology rolled out more widely.